Moving to New Machine

gfd · 12 Apr 2020

Greetings,

I hope you are all doing as well as possible in these tough times.

I am moving to a new machine. I will have 2 installations of Windows on separate partitions. One will be day to day stuff and the other music.

The day to day I will reinstall. That's simple. Music is a different kettle of fish. There are a great many programs installed. Some conventionally and some just with plugins copied to a folder. Most of the music programs are installed on a separate hard drive (not in C:\Program Files, etc). I really don't want to go through wiping and reinstalling everything.

I'm guessing that with the operating system gone, the installed programs (whichever drive they are installed on) will no longer have registry entries or application data, and in some instances this will be problematic.

What if I were to reinstall all of the software over top of existing installations? I know that sounds redundant. But it might save me having to reinstall a whole lot of data and libraries.

I would very much appreciate any help getting the best course forward. If I have to start from scratch, well I still have my old machine for production. But I'd rather not.

All replies most appreciated,

Graham

dalchina · 13 Apr 2020

Hi, considering your 'music' focussed O/S I would suggest two possibilities:

a. Assuming that is presently Win 10, you could consider simply moving your present disk, or a clone of it, from your old PC to your new PC. Windows is pretty good at adapting to a new hardware environment.

Factors to consider:
i. License and activation
ii. Whether your old and new PCs are both UEFI or MBR (must be the same to be able to simply move the whole installation).
iii. Whether your old PC uses a HDD and you want to use a SSD in your new one.
iv. Specification of your existing O/S (32 or 64 bits, Win 10 or not).

The exact sequence and tools depend on these.

Make sure you have a full backup of your source O/S - e.g. a full disk image.

b. Clean install on your new PC and use a program such as Laplink's PCMover (1-off single use license fee) to transfer your user environment. Some programs' licenses are also transferred. Last I looked the version using a disk image of the source installation was cheaper. That's also easier to implement. Easeus provides a similar program.

gfd · 13 Apr 2020

Thanks dal,

New machine both licenses will be retail. Old machine one retail and the other OEM. Both machines UEFI with GPT disks. All data on solid state drives. 64 bit Windows 10.

I have Macrium Reflect. Will also look into PC Mover.

Another quedtion. Something else occurred to me (be kinda nice if I could think od this all at once...save a few posts :) Current system is set up as RAID in BIOS. Is there any benefit to using AHCI on the new machine? Can it even be done? I think I read that setting up RAID on an Intel motherboard implements AHCI, which would make this question redundant.

I am suspicious of redeployment. Didn't someone once say that people, when faced with sufficiently advanced technology, would consider it magic :)

Graham

dalchina · 13 Apr 2020

Hi, this may be of interest.
AHCI vs IDE - Difference and Comparison | Diffen
noting:

However, Windows does not configure itself to load the AHCI driver upon boot if the SATA-drive controller was not in AHCI mode at the time of installation. So the PC will not boot up if the SATA controller is later switched to AHCI mode. The drive controller should be changed to AHCI or RAID before installing the operating system.

- and for completeness after installation:
Enable AHCI in Windows 8 and Windows 10 after Installation

However I will have to leave RAID comments to those with experience of this. This discussion may be of interest.
AHCI VS RAID: Which One Should I Choose for Better Performance?

As to redeployment, if you are referring to transferred a disk from one system to another, there are several threads here where users refer to having done it. There are also 3rd party programs (Macrium, Easeus I think) that essentially remove the drivers preparing an installation to run on dissimilar hardware.

PCMover etc- I've used these in the past with considerable success- just a few progs to reinstall of several hundred, and a few to apply licenses.

gfd · 13 Apr 2020

Thanks dal

dalchina · 13 Apr 2020

hope it works out for you.

Megahertz · 13 Apr 2020

If you have a Retail license on the old computer you can use it on the new one (it is transferable).
In my point of view, if you have two installations on the same computer, you only need one license.
In the second installation you don't even need to insert a license key. As the fist one is already activated, the second will activate by the itself.

gfd · 13 Apr 2020

Thanks Mega,

I already bought a second license.